Blog by James Millington, PhD

Tag: Miscellaneous

If you look at my blog posts over the last few months you might notice they’ve been becoming a less frequent. It can take time to write a post, and time has been hard to come by recently. I don’t expect time to be any more readily available in the near future, so from now on I’ll be posting my latest observations and thoughts on Twitter. Twitter, you see, is quicker. But it’s also thinner, and so from time-to-time I’ll be back here on my blog to get deeper into certain ideas and issues (or if I simply need more than 140 characters). If you don’t like Twitter and don’t want to follow me, my two latest tweets will always be at the top of this blog.

Now, I know a blog post about tweeting that complains about insufficient time to post blogs might seem absurd, but hopefully in the longer term the tweets and the blogs will prove an economic way to separate my more wheaty thoughts and observations from the chaffier ones…

I’ve just discovered Apture – it looks like a pretty cool tool for integrating media into websites and blogs like this one. I’ve just installed it and will be experimenting to see how well it works. When you see an icon like this or this , the link it accompanies should open some related content in an interactive Apture window (which you can reposition or enlarge as you please). Here’s an example:

However, despite all that (and all that was very good fun) one of the things that really took my attention was the National Bonsai and Penjing Museum at the National Arboretum. Whilst vaguely aware of Bonsai I don’t think I had ever actually seen a Bonsai tree (or ‘forest’ for that matter) outside of a book. I think I assumed they were just small trees in pots, like potted plants. I certainly have never really appreciated them until now.

Bonsai is the art of cultivating miniature trees through shaping, watering, and repotting. The goal is to produce a tree that is aesthetically pleasing and realises the the principle of ‘heaven and earth in one container’. To some, all the wiring that is required and the stunting of growth may seem un-natural (or even cruel), but the results (when done right, of course) are miniature forms of arboreal beauty, expressing how the past, the present, humanity, the elements, and change itself, are all fundamentally intertwined. Bonsai are not deformed caricatures – if they were we would be unable to associate them with the nature they reflect and as a consequence they would be infinitely less beautiful or intriguing.

If I have have encountered Bonsai infrequently before, I’m sure I have never been aware of the Chinese precursor, <a href="http://www.manlungpenjing.org/&#8221; class=”regular” target=”_blank”>Penjing. Penjing is not limited to the miniaturisation of trees but extends to the culture of idealised landscapes and scenery. Whereas Bonsai is an expression of Zen Buddhism, Penjing is philosophically influenced by Taoism and the concept of a universe containing inherently opposite but complementary forces (Yin and Yang). Penjing may juxtapose organic with mineral (for example using the root-over-rock style of tree culture) or include characters and figures to highlight contrasts in scale.

Initially, I saw Bonsai as idealisations of the untamed, full-size trees they share their genes with. And Penjing seemed to be an attempt to recreate reality on a reduced scale. But I was thinking about them as if they were models – abstract, intentionally objective, representations of reality like the ones we scientists often like to use to better understand the material world. But the more one considers them, observing the trees and the forms produced, and the more one reads and thinks about the philosophies underlying them, the more apparent it is that they are artistic creations that reflect their philosophies. They take the laws of biology and manipulate them to meet our human aesthetic intuitions. There is no claim of objectivity – this is art.

So, there are certainly plenty of venerable museums, monuments, institutions, and buildings in Washington DC. As expected I got to see and appreciate many of them. But I didn’t expect to come away with a greater appreciation and interest in an ancient art form (other than brewing, of course).

Over the last week or so I’ve made a few changes to my website. The CV page has gone and a link to this blog (the one you’re reading right now) has been place in a more prominent position, right up there between Home and Research. I’ve also added a Headline Animator down in the lower left corner of each page that displays the latest blog posts I’ve made (and links to the blog). If you do want to see my CV I’ve provided links on the Home and Publications pages to download a .pdf version.

When I get round to reading this new batch I’ll review some of these also (at first glance the Wiens et al. book looks particularly useful for any Landscape Ecologist – student, teacher or researcher). You’ve got up until May 31st to order yours.

Amazingly it’s just over a year since I arrived in Michigan and started my postdoc at MSU. Time flies when you’re having fun, eh? Well, the first few months didn’t fly so fast… but it’s been fairly well shooting by recently. That’s not to say I don’t miss home everynowandthen. Especially when I see videos like this about my hometown: